It is a question that resurfaces regularly online, particularly among mothers exasperated by watching their husbands vanish for what can stretch to half an hour, leaving them to manage the children alone. What exactly are men doing during all that time in the bathroom?
In an article published last month on her blog, Olivia Howell, an American divorce coach, gave the habit a name: “weaponized pooping.”
The term draws on the concept of strategic incompetence — feigning difficulty with a task so that someone else takes it on. The bathroom, Howell argues, is an ideal escape from household chores because “its legitimacy is practically impossible to challenge.”
She acknowledges that using the toilet is a necessity. But “what is telling is everything that comes with it: the phone, the locked door, the extra twenty minutes, the assumption that someone else will handle everything in the meantime.” Her ex-husband, she recalls, “could simply become temporarily invisible to the family.”
A Different Reality for Mothers
Mothers could also benefit from such a “moment to themselves,” Howell notes — but instead, when they rush to the bathroom, they must be ready to emerge at any moment if something goes wrong. Sometimes they announce they are going, or even leave the door open, knowing the children will walk in regardless.
“Mothers cannot cross the bathroom threshold and become what I call in my blog post a ‘private citizen,’ because responsibilities follow them there,” she told HuffPost US. “Children always need supervision. Meals need to be cooked. The dog needs to be walked. Someone has to stay alert for suspicious noises in the next room.”
As she argues in her post, perhaps the equitable distribution of mental load within a couple lies in ensuring that each partner “can close a door and know that, during their absence, the world will keep turning.”
Unsurprisingly, Howell’s blog post provoked a backlash from men. “Women don’t even want you to go to the bathroom,” one X user wrote in a viral tweet.
What Men Say They Are Actually Doing
Returning to the original question: what are men truly doing during those long bathroom sessions? Miguel, a married man with no children living in Manila, Philippines, sees the bathroom as one of the few places where he can browse his phone undisturbed.
“Usually I just scroll through social media or watch random videos, because I sometimes feel guilty doing it in front of my wife,” he explains. “It’s a convenient way to temporarily excuse myself from household chores or from being disturbed when I simply want a moment alone.”
Miguel insists, however, that he does not practice “weaponized pooping” by deliberately extending his time on the throne. “I do 80% of the household chores,” he says.
“Sometimes you genuinely need a few minutes alone. But when bathroom time is constantly used to escape relationships, parenting, household responsibilities, or quality time with your partner, I think it can become a form of avoidance,” says Antonio Breez, a content creator based in Southern California. His personal record is 45 minutes — long enough for his legs to start tingling, a sign it was probably time to get up.
Hayden, a 25-year-old from California, scrolls Reddit or Discord, plays games on his phone, or — since his bathroom is in the same room — tends to his appearance, brushes his teeth while on a call, or masturbates. “I don’t like watching YouTube because either the volume is too low for me to hear, or it’s loud enough that others know what I’m doing,” he says.
A Question of Fiber?
A few years ago, Paul Gulley, a content creator based in North Carolina, made a humorous video explaining why men spend so long in the bathroom. “I have never considered the bathroom a way to escape my role as a husband or father,” he insists. “Why would I choose not to be present for the people I love most?”
For Gulley, the fundamental issue is not so much whether someone spends ten or thirty minutes in the bathroom, but rather the sharing of mental load. He also defends men who, in many cases, likely do not consume enough fiber: often, men simply have difficulty with bowel movements, without any strategic intent.
“Sometimes the answer, though unexciting, is simply that I am genuinely using the toilet all that time, and several minutes can pass between bowel movements.”
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